


i will come back to life, but only for you

by hoshi_ni_natte



Series: there is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen, Major Spoilers, between manga chapter 703 and 704 i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28240101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoshi_ni_natte/pseuds/hoshi_ni_natte
Summary: Takasugi lets go, he lets itallgo.
Relationships: Sakata Gintoki & Takasugi Shinsuke, Takasugi Shinsuke & Yoshida Shouyou
Series: there is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070330
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	i will come back to life, but only for you

**Author's Note:**

> summary subject to change i couldnt think of one. also will be editing this a lot sorry in advance  
> anyway heyyyy this was supposed to be chapter 2 of [the world may call it a second chance but when i came back it was more of a relapse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27102109/chapters/66178825) but i decided to make it its own fic because this one technically Isnt post-canon, and it can stand alone without that fic though that fic kinda needs this in context. maybe i'll make it a series. sorry about that. "who are you apologizing to" myself.  
> but if youre here to check it out too hello! you dont need to read that linked fic for this!!
> 
> this is uhhh between chapter 703 and 704. SPOILERS major spoilers!!!!!!! get out of here if you dont know what happened in the manga yet or if youre an anime-only waiting for the movie. "why not just publish this after the movie" im mentally ill

_“…So this is it…?”_

Such is the first articulate thought Takasugi had when he regained some semblance of consciousness; he wasn’t going to question where he was, how he got there, or what there was to do from then on. He was remarkably certain, without a single shred of doubt, that he had _died—_ for real this time—and so ended up nowhere else but in hell. Needless to say, he was supremely unimpressed and underwhelmed to find himself in the void, falling, flying, fumbling.

He was numb all over, detached from any and every last one of his senses. Stripped of even the recollection of what anything looked, smelled, tasted, or sounded like, he could only remember the impermanent sensation of a single drop of something wet on his cheek as he eventually lost touch with everything around him, and ultimately lost touch with himself. Before he could cuss at chance and circumstance over the irony of the very rain which he so much loathed chasing him till the bitter end, a twinge of familiarity roused him to awareness, and rationalized with him about how rain was usually much, much colder.

It was far too hot, far too similar to a tear, and even if Takasugi had never lost one of his eyes, it had been way too long since he was of constitution stable enough, body and spirit, to have it in him, in his system or in his soul, to _cry;_ no matter how much storm clouds overhead and in his heart tempted him so, he never really could anymore. So casually he had concluded that it wasn’t his, and it wasn’t rain, either.

While once it had dragged him back from the clutches of a helpless, cowardly, _easy,_ undeserved death and brought him in the midst of some rubble of a planet and the fray with new friends, one with old friends had sent him off and away from another, straight through it to _here,_ and Takasugi couldn’t seem to deny that it was the only end fitting for someone like him, one to rightfully curse him for never treasuring either the way he should have.

Supposing he had time—supposing he could even perceive it at that point—Takasugi contemplated the likelihood of being left to simmer in his regret for all the grueling rest of eternity. Still if that was all hell had to offer, then honestly it was hardly any different from when Takasugi had been alive, and it would just take some getting used to. If he could point out a single difference, it was that he had the company of no one to even try to turn to for comfort. Not that he ever meant to allow himself that privilege when he lived, but the option was there at least, along with the much easier-to-let-himself-have alternatives of songs on a shamisen to soothe his ears after too long and too close exposures to explosions and carnage in attempts to topple the country, bottles of sake to wash down and away the acrid iron in his mouth, and medicated herbs in a pipe that reminded him that he was, against the entire world’s torment and derision, alive and breathing.

There, there was nothingness, and within it nothing but Takasugi’s ghost, bleeding out without blood into nowhere and for who knows how long. Notwithstanding his being underwhelmed since he had for all his transgressions and trespasses expected some more elaborate retribution, all to be left to himself in a transparent mind prison, Takasugi couldn’t exactly complain. Being stuck in his own head had always been its own special sort of torture anyway, and without his mortality there was no longer even the slightest luck of any kind of relief. It sure as hell was _hell,_ alright. But Takasugi had made his bed, so he lied in it. Died in it.

It wasn’t important anymore anyway. Unsurprisingly, the flow of time didn’t seem to manifest itself in hell. Though Takasugi never spoke about it, he had night frights that felt similar, haunting him for the duration of the few hours he’d be too tired to keep his eye open, plunging him into episodes that felt as if they would stretch on for weeks and months and years and lifetimes and centuries on end, because those conveniently came part and parcel of an immortal’s Altana-charged blood, carrying with it and streaming through Takasugi’s veins its memories, even when he’d absorbed it into him dried up and chalky with his own blade for the first time as a last resort and as his last stand. Now Takasugi had already believed so, but waking up from terror upon terror of fucked up fragments of lives that weren’t his wore him down and out into a pathetic state of helpless hollowness and drove it in hard: hell, before it was anything else, truly was a place on Earth.

If Takasugi could call it anything, be grateful for it for anything, it was like some convoluted rehearsal for that which was destined to come for him and claim his cesspit of a soul. It wasn’t exceedingly difficult to confront that he was bound to spend forever and then some just searching the depths and corners of his conscience for anything that could justify all he’d done and gone and wreaked havoc upon. All that effort for virtually _nothing_ — nothing but love, loss, and lies, because in the end he was only ever just a good-for-nothing brat through and through.

It wasn’t a spectacular conclusion to come to, at least not in the least, because it wasn’t anything Takasugi hadn’t already known and so deeply despised about himself. But it wasn’t anything he was willing to or much less _able_ to change, either. All that meant was that he was ready to run wild and take himself down if he could take the rest of the rotten world down with him. And maybe then, _just_ maybe then, the weight of the world would crush him instead, _instead_ of the man who tried to bear it all on his shoulders, all on his own.

The idea wasn’t unwelcome. Takasugi had so much time yet none at all to kill, after all, and after arbitrarily picking himself apart, there were a few other prospects to ponder. He wondered if he’d be able to tell how much time would pass before aforementioned man who wanted just as desperately to change the world (salvage it rather than destroy it, for the sake of the very same sentiment—as a fellow good-for-nothing brat) came barging in to make good of literal last-minute plans made for a rematch.

Nothing lofty like a promise was made the day Takasugi Shinsuke and Sakata Gintoki worked together to both salvage _and_ destroy the world as they knew it, because that’s just the relationship between the two of them, and that’s just who they are as schoolmates, as samurai, as humans. Though, challenges were just as swell by their incorrigible immaturity and just as much worthy of being honored as their shitty, godforsaken bushido, so hilariously, Takasugi elected to wait patiently for him in hell like he asked. That’s even if it would take an aeon and a half, because for all of the guy’s recklessness, Gintoki was simply the type not to die even when killed.

While it would have been less complicated to attribute that to a debatably well-written case of Main Character Immunity and Infallibility— _god,_ Gintoki could always bring out his uncharacteristic capacity to play along and break the fourth wall, even from fucking _hell_ — it also just made more sense to acknowledge that Gintoki had simply lived differently than him. _So_ differently that whether he’d even end up in hell was no guarantee.

Gintoki had things he couldn’t leave behind as easily, no matter what, things he had decided to protect with his life and defend to his dying breath. And he’d grown unafraid to admit it. Among their scary similarities were few but irreconcilable differences, and one of the latter is their willingness to admit to affection. Thereafter with the small things fluctuating and piling up, they had drifted so inexorably apart, that by the time Gintoki could finally reach him and drag him kicking and screaming out of the pit of chaos and corruption he fell into after coming completely unhinged, after falling so far gone that he had deranged himself into reveling in either of them losing everything all over again, it was already way too late to stay by his side.

Sure, Gintoki was a whole bastard in his own special way, but despite deeming himself irredeemable, the truth was that he had never done a single thing to warrant being thrown into hell or anywhere remotely near it. And for one reason or another, that realization, to Takasugi, seriously hurt like _hell:_ _Gintoki wasn’t coming— not for him, not ever again._ This _was_ it, and all that would ever be for him. It became so excruciating that it was palpable, tangible; Takasugi considered that he might have somehow suddenly come to reacquaint himself with the notion of physical pain. It was afflicting, and astounding, and allaying, all at once. And it wasn’t unlike reliving his final moments.

That he was cut down by a sword he held intimately—whether his own katana or _Gintoki,_ both he trusted with all that he had and all that he was though one incidentally more reluctantly than the other— didn’t save him from the full impact of that strike; nothing could. Sharpened and sustained by Gintoki’s very will, it tore Utsuro down to the very core, and while Takasugi had conspiringly held him down in his body for the utter undoing, there was no way it could withstand an attack like that, even if he _weren’t_ already a dead man walking.

Once Utsuro perished and vanished along with him went his farce of endlessness, and all that Takasugi’s body had endured in the last two years of his so-called life leading up to that decisive instant—stabs straight through his chest, slashes straight across his neck, a shallow cut on his cheek like a mockery of a greeting kiss— had caught up to him altogether and rendered him done for once and for all, ruined him anywhere he could feel and so intensely that he couldn’t even move, couldn’t even shout. And so Gintoki wailed out enough for the both of them. Takasugi could confess that more times than he could count he had privately fantasized about Gintoki being the one to do him in, put him out of his misery, but frankly speaking he hadn’t anticipated getting so damn beat up that he couldn’t even object as he was held in his arms like he was, in spite of anything and everything, something to be cherished. At least he could get a few clever words in, and at least he was spared from having to see his alter ego mourn him on top of that.

He was convinced he should have suffered more and he would have gladly taken it in stride, taken responsibility for it here because he couldn’t there, but before long all that had faded away anyway. Irregardless, the final, brutal reality that he’d never, _ever_ get his rematch with Gintoki seemed to bring it all back, and with a vengeance so vicious that he could feel it down to the farthest filthy fiber of his being. It was like expiring a second time and a third time and then a hundred millionth time, and Takasugi bitter/sweetly welcomed this as his belated but well-earned suffering.

When it had finally started to fade away once more, Takasugi _did_ lament it, because then what would be left to come after? What would be left of _him_ after? It was unresistingly, however, that he resigned himself to the inevitable course of becoming one with nothingness itself, because if this really was it, it’d be fine, he’d _have_ to be fine with it.

But then in a foreign, unforeseen fit of clarity he noticed that the pain wasn’t subsiding, not exactly— it was _shifting._ It was changing form, into something less comfortable, less experienced by this… _his_ … _body?_ as if the time he bade awaiting the cessation of his existence was turning backwards and turning _him_ back along with it, into a version of him that simply _was,_ a version of him that wasn’t yet acquainted with true pain, at least not until he started slacking off to cut class from his disillusioning pompous education and got ahead of himself only to get himself kicked to the curb when for the first time in his life he found something worth taking on with passion.

Such passion only ever earned him blow after blow from a bamboo sword in a run-down dojo, injury after injury, and though those were such distant memories to Takasugi, they instantly evoked within him some long-lost peace and amenity, because when his persistent motivation to win a match against a white demon child overrode both common sense and instinctive self-preservation, there always came someone to look after him. Indulgently because he had nothing left to lose, Takasugi let himself think back to that backroom behind what would become the place he called home after getting disowned, the place he came to learn from and love more than anything or anywhere in the world.

That backroom always gave off the warmth of being lived in, and without fail every single time it calmed him down enough to face his own powerlessness and so obediently be tended to. Takasugi could very well recall the soft of the futon laid out for him to rest, the grit of bandages plastered all over him to alleviate his sores and aches, the scent of dried blood and homemade ointments, and the ring of wind chimes, accompanying someone’s… _song,_ a mollifying hum that he would give into the temptation of humming along to if his throat didn’t feel so sickeningly hoarse.

With great care, Takasugi swallows, and the harshness of it is just as startling as the ability to do so at all. And when he opens his eyes from bleakness to a blinding brightness, they adjust well enough for him to make out cherry blossoms flittering into the room, leading Takasugi’s gaze from the blue spring sky behind them towards the earthy tatami, upon which a few feet away from him is seated the master of this abode and Takasugi’s soul: Yoshida Shouyou.

It’s unmistakably him. Finding Takasugi only mildly begrudging, a vague feeling washes over him, not unfamiliar like the sensation of waking up from a dream just to lapse into another, and this is but one of several he’d had nearly nightly since he quit the battlefield half-blind and long before that when their school was burned to the ground. Even after he’d made up his mind that the sole way to pay the unfair, cruel world back was to raze it to the ground in kind, the hopeful-against-hope part of him that he’d tucked away deep in the recesses of a heart he couldn’t be sure he still had after the world and he himself trampled all over it again and again and again, yearned for Shouyou-sensei to come bash his head in with a single knock of his fist, admonish him for things he was a hundred years too early to even think of trying to do if he was just going to half-ass it, and bring him back— to his side, and to his own senses.

Except, those dreams never felt as vivid as this does now, never as lucid. They always began with Shouyou-sensei crossing over to places neither he nor any other member of Shouka Sonjuku could follow him into even if it meant starting large-scale rebellions or joining large-scale wars, and they always ended without Takasugi in control of a slight thing. For the time-being, though, he feels strangely in control, can consciously but not without struggling inhale, blink twice, exhale. Wiggle his fingers, lift an arm, stretch a hand out towards the back ahead of him, and muster all the courage and energy he has in him to speak his name.

But he doesn’t have to. Before he can test his feeble voice, Shouyou has already turned around to face him, lips curving up into a smile so small and subtle that it’s barely there but it still catches Takasugi speechless, breathless, and relentlessly emphasizes why losing him was a perfectly sufficient reason to forego the outlook of properly moving on or letting time heal his wounds for cynicism and nihilism and every wretched thing in between, none of which ever could do anything for him save for pick at his scars till they bled over, stoke the flames of hatred burning within him and blackening his faith in anything, _everything_ but destruction.

More than anything, Shouyou’s smile is serene, sanguine, solemn, and unfaltering as it smothers an entire lifetime’s worth of Takasugi’s disquiets and misgivings. His head tilted to a side in a gesture of thoughtfulness, and candidness, as if he didn’t mean to do what he did but was glad he did it anyway, Shouyou breaks the silence: _“Ah…_ Have you come to?”

Takasugi had committed Shouyou-sensei’s face to reminiscence along with old bonds and aspirations and contempt, but try as he had time and time again he never could emulate Sensei’s voice as crisp and clear as it sounds in this moment _._ The possibility that this could be just another elaborate illusion conjured up by fatigue to offset his hysterics is enough to keep Takasugi from attempting to speak again, because if he did anything the delicate, impeccable balance of whatever this is would all come crashing down, and then that would be one more drop in the sea of shit he may never forgive himself for. Either way, he’d only get interrupted by the sob that now rips right through his throat, involuntary though violent and overwhelming, so overwhelming. Then there are tears rising, forcing their way into his eyes, stinging and scaring him into not blinking them away lest he finds Sensei crossing over to unreachable plains and planes again— lest he has his heart broken again.

But as if to reassure him even through the haze, Shouyou does something he’s never done, not in any of his past lives, and not in Takasugi’s delusions: he stays. More than that, he scrambles, clambers over towards Takasugi in haste, and it’s so _silly,_ so much like he used to be past his abundance of wisdom and grace, and so genuine, that even once gathered in his arms, Takasugi couldn’t stop crying if he tried with all his might. The tears come in terrifying torrents, as if through flood gates that have finally, _finally_ caved in after standing stubbornly for decades longer than slated for, weathered through all seasons by boundless depressions. And Shouyou, being Shouyou, holds steady and steadfast through the entirety of the natural calamity that is Takasugi’s long, long-overdue breakdown, shelters him like the tempest wasn’t brewed and born within him, like the devastation wasn’t his doing. And he doesn’t waver, doesn’t say a word.

If it’s just weakness, then Takasugi learned to live _and_ die with it. But if it’s vulnerability, well, he’s never felt so bare, so raw, yielding to tears he swore he’d never shed, not when his parents shamed him for the shame brought by his misconducts, not when crows swooped down from the heavens and snatched Shouyou-sensei away, not even when he lost his left eye along with everything that ever had enough of him to drive him to insanity if he had to part with. Yet at the same time he’s never felt so secure, never safer than in the warmth enveloping him in full, unconditional acceptance of the ugliest, most pitiful, most awful side of him, the one he did everything in his power not to expose nor express yet Sensei would have embraced as part of him with as much tenderness all the same.

Takasugi has half a mind to recoil, because not once in his time as Shouyou’s student had he ever outright asked him for anything—not for him to wipe his ass when Gintoki handed it to him, not the little green hand-bound, handwritten book they had studied thereafter— but Shouyou lent him a part of his soul without charge anyway, nurtured him freely and earnestly and wholeheartedly. The other half of Takasugi’s mind is compelling him to just _please_ let up, let himself find solace in these arms as he for once cries his heart out, and it wins out, wins him over.

He lets go, he lets it _all_ go, bawling into Shouyou-sensei’s chest and clutching at him for what must have been longer than the non-time he spent in the void of hell, coughing, heaving, wheezing, whimpering confessions about all he had done and failed to do, how he did less than he could have, more than he should have, and how he had made the absolute worst of the life that had cost Sensei _his,_ wrecked it along with everyone else’s in cold blood because he couldn’t fucking stand that the world could do what it did to Shouka Sonjuku, to _Sensei,_ to Gintoki, and he couldn’t rest until he either reclaimed his days with them or exacted his revenge in place of it, whichever he got first, or got him first, whichever _ended_ him first. He goes on and on and _on_ until he’s completely exhausted his spirit and his body, such a tiny, frail thing that feels like it could fall apart if Sensei isn’t holding him together.

It’s only after an indefinite amount of time that the tremors start to slowly subside, going from a magnitude of the multitude of sins to a slight shaking, shimmying motion on Takasugi’s part, who’s distracted from his despair by the untimely determination to wipe his snot and slobber somewhere, _anywhere_ less disgraceful than on his master’s kimono. He’s about to break free from Shouyou’s grasp when he glances up and sees that small smile again, filtering through them a low phrase, some high praise: _“How strong you’ve become…”_ He’s tilting his head again, quizzically this time around, as if to test Takasugi on which he’s evidencing as his strength: that he’s stopped crying without being hushed, or that he cried _at all_ to begin with. But Takasugi can only concentrate on the words that follow, because they dare to send him relapsing and recollapsing in emotion: _“…My little samurai.”_

Thankfully, Takasugi’s run out of tears to shed, only hiccupping soundlessly, disputing that wordlessly: he doesn’t know a damned thing about being a samurai, but _little_ was right. Through thoroughly red and puffy eyes, he can see that he’s already made a mess on both their clothes, and as he tries to no avail to clean it up, he registers just how tiny his hands are, how free of callouses, how smooth. He really _is_ back to the version of himself from the time he hadn’t known what a real bout was all about, hadn’t known how much pain this world and he himself alike could put him through, the version of him that can’t contain himself and readily unravels, breaks down into shambles from sheer sentiment. And his voice is the same, rough around the edges not from puberty or vindictiveness but just from having cried so much as he manages a nervous croak, _“Shouyou-sensei…”_

“Mm?” Shouyou sings in answer, offering a fresh wash cloth he’s produced seemingly out of nowhere to him, which he humbly accepts. He watches patiently as Takasugi squeezes his own cute, boyish features for good measure before scrubbing them into the towel a notch more harshly than necessary, and when he takes it back it’s without minding that Takasugi ended up blowing his nose into it, too. He just sets it aside and waits for Takasugi to continue where he left off, on the off-chance that he has more to say.

There isn’t much left to say though, really. As Takasugi rubs his eyes with the back of his hand to refresh, he satisfies himself with the knowledge that Shouyou-sensei responded when he called, and that, in and of itself, is pure bliss, literally everything he was ready to make an enemy of the universe to take back if that’s what it took. He blinks his eyes back into focus, catching petals blowing in again, and Takasugi’s gaze traces the course opposite the one it took earlier, from where the petals are landing on their laps towards the trees the breeze has been picking flowers off of. Outside the backroom is a bamboo fence, and beyond it stands a lone figure on the dirt road facing away from them. Takasugi recognizes him by the dull gray of his hair even before Sensei prompts,

“Won’t you see your senior disciple off?” Shouyou nods in his direction, placid and misty-eyed. His hand finds its way atop Takasugi’s head, patting idly, gently, leaving them both wondering if he’s doing it to console him _or_ himself, because though what he says next is something to celebrate there’s a hint of melancholy in his whisper: “He’s graduated.” He chuckles lightly at the look of confusion that puts on Takasugi’s face and smooths his fingers onto his hair to ease him. “Certainly, all of you have. But he said bringing you back here was the last thing he wanted to do before he leaves.”

An image flashes in Takasugi’s mind, one he isn’t sure is a memory or a hallucination, of being carried by his senior disciple the way he had carried _him_ to lay to rest when his blood finally ran dry; after imploring the help of his ashes Takasugi had taken all that remained of him back to Shouka Sonjuku then, and now he’s done the same for him. It hardly matters to Takasugi if this were him taking his turn as gratitude, or his repentance for trying to steal their master back only to end up serving a villain instead, or a farewell present to his unexpectedly dear junior disciples since this is apparently the last of him any of them will ever see; what matters is the crucial fact of the matter: he didn’t fall as far into hell as he could or should have because the last of those crows had picked him up piece by piece and with the final flaps of their tattered wings pieced him back together to take their last stand with him.

As if reading the thoughts racing through his head, Shouyou levels Takasugi with a look of knowingness, a mutual understanding of how this— _they—_ could be as they are now, the faintest traces of the shared internal Altana, its capacity and effect draining and dwindling while allowing every moment up till now and every moment that’s following. And then it’s a look of pleading, Shouyou’s smile haltingly becoming strained with a resoluteness that has Takasugi crestfallen, dissuades him from saying _anything_ when he gravely adds: “And bringing you back _there_ is the last thing I want to do before I leave as well.”

His words and all they imply chill Takasugi to the bone, put his stomach in knots and make him shiver, wrap like icy fingers around his heart and squeeze so tightly he feels it threatening to shatter, except it can’t, and it won’t, because this is what Sensei wants… isn’t it? This is _all_ Sensei has ever wanted, and he knows it, and they could all live their lives over a few hundred times but Takasugi would never, not in any iteration of their fates, become better (or worse) than Gintoki at resisting Sensei’s wishes, even if it means not choosing him again, not having him again, not being with him again, because that’s the only reachable conclusion.

Then Shouyou can perceive through the windows of Takasugi’s soul, those big, bright green eyes, and through the childish quiver of his bottom lip, the struggle of restraining himself from talking back, surely about how so much of this fleeting meeting Takasugi had merely wasted just _crying_ like the brat that he was and has always been and will always be, and how if Sensei has how ever much of whatever _fucked up_ power left to bring someone back it should be _himself,_ not him, since that would both rid the world of one of its most notorious terrorists and make Gintoki _happier._ But unfortunately for Takasugi, Shouyou transitively has neither right nor desire to clamor about not terrorizing mankind, and he’s been aware that Gintoki has, even without closure with Shouyou, ever since they were kids lunging at each other over just about anything, daydreamed daily about him and Takasugi pouring each other drinks and getting drunk off of their asses together one day, many days, all the days if possible.

And unfortunately for them all, Shouyou would never hesitate to sacrifice himself, even if it’s just for that. He would sacrifice himself a _thousand_ times over for them, for all that they’d been through together and apart in the past in lies and loss and love, and for all that’s waiting for them in their lives together in the future, whatever comes next and how ever, to make amends wherever passable and maybe new memories whenever possible.

See, in the first place, that Shouyou could reawaken to marvel at what has become of his most precious, most treasured pupils in their exploit to each become their own samurai as he’s taught them and as they’ve taught him, as well as help them protect the family they’d found and the home they’d built with them, was already nothing short of a miracle when he was ready to forever disappear with nothing—not even the need to see it for himself—but faith in them. He’s gotten more than he could have ever asked for, more than he deserved, and more than enough, he swears. That’s why even if he _were_ capable of more than this, he wouldn’t do anything except thank them through it.

The fight within Takasugi eventually slips, dies down, quelled by more hearty pats on his head and an impossibly nostalgic sense of defeat, because none of them ever really stood a chance against Shouyou-sensei, did they? Takasugi settles for bowing his head, taking a deep breath in and letting it out shallow, swallowing the lump in his throat along with his immature pride and protests, and the oncoming sadness of his impending parting with Sensei a second time, because even if he _is_ just a child now and would consequently be pardoned for being plain _sad,_ he shouldn’t be. At the very least, it’s easier this time, accepting it. Whether easier than the alternative of burning in hell for good or not, it’s just… easier than last time, because when he looks up no one is smiling through tears, just _smiling._ “Sensei—”

“By the way, if you’re wondering,” Shouyou cuts in, eyes closing in an overly overtly lax expression, the rest of his posture relaxed in a display of self-assuredness now that he’s certain he’ll get his way. “You’ll know how you’ll turn out after this, I’m sure Gintoki told you.” He brings a hand to the back of his head and scratches sheepishly and spills out a long-winded explanation, “Simply put, we’re stealing the plot from chapter 680, that’s anime episode 365 after the Silver Soul Arc. When Gintoki went Dragon Hole-hopping and he picked up a baby that developed rapidly then turned out to be me?” He repositions himself and gets on his feet, dusting himself off. “Dear me, I hope this isn’t a spoiler, people who’ve read this far must’ve already known what happened, right—?”

 _“—What?”_ Takasugi sputters, incredulous. He guessed it would turn out to be something like that because he isn’t dumb and who gives a flying heck about pulling off the same surreal stunts from before, but what’s with the obviously deliberately calculated formula of Sensei saying it now that they’re wrapping up? Is it Gintoki’s idiot fourth wall-breaking influence reaching and barging into this sacred place, too? His tolerance level for bullshit makes him feel both sick and alive; it simultaneously breaks past its limits and plummets into the negatives, sending a vein in his temple bursting, because furthermore, _“_ Even you, Sensei??!”

“Even _you,”_ Shouyou corrects cheerfully, heedless of the head-pounding he’s causing Takasugi and whoever is reading this. “It’ll be the same, maybe a little slower because you aren’t exactly built for regeneration now are you? Pray someone picks you up as soon as possible, I can’t estimate where you’ll end up.” He laughs and leans down again, kneels to guide Takasugi back into the futon and tuck him in, all the while wearing a rare grin that gives away their mutual exasperation at the situation and seems to say, _‘Well how about giving Gintoki hell for the both of us when you return then?’_

Before he can even draw a breath to shoot something back with characteristic sarcasm about _hell_ , the scene suddenly blurs, and Takasugi doesn’t know if it’s his headache and the complimentary drowsiness, or if it’s this dimension literally crumbling away as the Altana’s power depletes to redirect into rebirthing him. His eyelids just feel so, so heavy. The last thing he registers is Shouyou-sensei turning around and looking over his shoulder at him as his lips form around a goodbye, or is it a goodnight? and one last fond _my little samurai,_ before he loses _this_ semblance of consciousness.

The next time Takasugi wakes up, he’s on the verge of going deaf from a piercing, high-pitched scream rumbling from within him that he can’t decide is in the nature of this tiny vessel or not, wailing over the discomforts of the cold hard ground under his bare skin and a humid draft caressing it, a too bright light shining in from an opening somewhere ways away, and the murmurs of by-passers hoping to inspect the commotion he’s causing as if he hadn’t quite literally just been to hell and back.

And then that was that. _That_ was it.

**Author's Note:**

> ahaha sorry for bullshitting the ending ive been trying to write this since october and thinking of takasugi makes me ill. not that finishing this will make it stop but at least i can rest easy knowing there is a fic out there that semi-seriously tackles takasugi being alive at the end even if it's shitty because it's Mine. i dont know if there are others i just wanted to throw mine in anyway. ALSO i wanted to talk more explicitly about zura and kiheitai and oboro because theyre important to takasugi too but i decided to stick with mostly just gintoki and shouyou for this one. the rest maybe i'll tackle in other works of what is supposed to be a series now apparently.  
> i so badly dont want this fic to come off as something obviously written by someone whos lovesick for takasugi but if it does. well you know why  
> that's all! let me know what you think if you wanna! most of all if you made it this far thanks for reading!!


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